Bowl 2 Discussion

[Vogue]

Ignore them, they're biased; the rest of us thought the bowl was super exciting.

[J Dawg]

I feel the same. Many players move from clan to clan essentially to win. Bowl kind of prevents the stackage of teams, and also makes sure teams like rd (no offense to rd) win with different lineup of players.

IMO, like liz said earlier, that the bowl proves to show that clans with more loyal players win. In the semis it was ct, revolver, rogue and MYM. all four of those teams used relatively the same lineup of players in ladle, and all four of them are good clans (even with mym's transitional period.) Whereas other teams (with the exception of roadrunnerz and Team unknown) did not fare so well. if redemption didn't switch there lineup every two ladles, maybe your clan would have progressed farther, but having five players eligible is not the bowls fault.

As for what you said about ct winning the bowl, it's not like all the other clans gave us the win because they didnt have the players. Revolver had the same lineup as they do ladle, same with rogue without lacka. that shows extreme improvement for our clan as those two clans are the top teams as of now. and we beat rd even when you had a 6th player, so to say winning th bowl doesn't prove anything for ct, I hope rd and ct play in ladle, because I assure you we will prove your statement wrong.

[Soul]

Relax jdawg. I never said ct didn't deserve the win. All I said was it doesn't prove they were best for the whole season, which is what the bowl was intended for.

There's no need to turn a discussion into an endless argument.

And in response to gonzap, we had more than 6 eligible

[Overrated]

In all fairness, if you move it down to 3 or 4 ladles to qualify, you're just telling people they can move around pretty freely and not really worry about being able to play in the "biggest tournament of the year." The thing I like about the Bowl is the loyalty aspect of it. Sure it's unlikely a clan will keep a roster 100% together for an entire year and there will be players that get rotated out, but the bowl should reward consistency throughout the year since it's a season-long event. I wouldn't want a "super team" being formed 3 months before the Bowl only to attempt to run-over the competition. You don't see teams in professional sports moving them into super teams (maybe the Miami Heat in the NBA, but that's for another day and all the players wanted to go there BUT they didn't move mid-season, they worked all year together and it still took them 2 years of working together to win their championship).

Anyway, personally, it felt like another ladle with a bigger name to me. Probably because I felt R didn't get a "full" experience because SP didn't even field a team.* Still, the matches were really fun and the whole point of this is to have fun.

I don't see a need to change anything except for how many make it in the tournament and how it's played. Put it down to 4 teams, make the matches in a different style than a pure single elimination tournament. I say round-robinesque (like someone suggested). One match to 150 in the opening rounds (1 plays 4 and 2 plays 3, 1 plays 2 and 3 plays 4, 1 plays 3 and 2 plays 4 (basically like 3 rounds)), top two records advance (if everyone is 2-1, have total points between the matches advance (a team that lost 50-150 won't advance to finals to a team that lost 130-150)) to best of 3 to 150 or 200 in the finals. Might be a little on the high side in terms of length, but I think anything like that can be kinked out or worked out while we figure out what is going to be done.

*R had 12 people show up so we had a mini war vs ourselves instead, which reinforces the fun point, just didn't have the tournament quality.

[DaGarBBaGeMAN]

Bowl rules were perfect for all the arguments already mentioned. If a season is 9 months, then 5 seems to be an ideal number (right above midpoint). If anything needs to be changed, it would be extending the match length just to make it feel different from a normal Ladle.

[sinewav]

... just to make it feel different from a normal Ladle.

And that's actually how best to proceed. As you have seen, the Bowl succeeded where similar ideas failed. On more than one occasion we have tried leagues (AFL, FPL) with limited success. Multiple Fort events tend to cause burn-out. What we have done is embed league play into our monthly Fortress event, transparently. The teams who like league-style play can participate with that in mind then join the Bowl later. The teams who don't care about league play just participate in Ladle normally. Everyone wins.

This is the least disruptive way to introduce change. Gradually, Bowl will become more distinct so it doesn't feel the same as Ladle.

After thinking about it, I would like to keep 8 teams in the Bowl. The weaker rosters will be eliminated anyway. But I'm not sure how we can increase/decrease the score limits and number of matches with so many teams. With 4 teams we have more flexibility to play best of 5 or 150 point matches.

[Bytes]

You could make the first round 1 match to 150, means it's quick but leaves room for upsets which are exciting and lets the lower teams with consistent teams have a chance to show themselves against higher teams who might be fielding weakened teams due to restrictions.
You could then play semis and finals as 5 x 100 point matches.

[Concord]

finals just has got to be best of 5. it really does

[vov]

I think if this tournament should feel any different from a ladle, then make it different. Basically I felt like I played an extra ladle, with teams from up to half a year ago. Maybe if it had a different setup it would feel more special, like your ideas about round-robins or longer matches.

Maybe 8 teams; 2 groups of 4 (fully seeded or 1-4 seeded apart from each other and 5-8 random), teams in those groups playing one match to 150 against each other, then "1st A vs. 2nd B"* and vice versa as semifinals (best of 3 to 100), then a grand final (best of 5 to 100).
This would be a quick example for something different, while it should also not take much more time to play out than the current form since the group matches are only one match each. If it gets organized well, it might take just as long as a normal ladle.
*in 3-way ties the highest total scores would advance


About who can be qualified to play for a team, I think the current "half the season in that team" is quite good, however I think there should be exceptions if a team wouldn't have enough players; maybe allow max. 1-2 players to each team who only played 1/3 of the season there (min. 3 ladles) and did not play more ladles for any other team. If the player did play 3 ladles each for 2 teams, his team should either be the one with less players or the more recent one. This way every player would be still qualified for only one team while also making full teams more likely. It's simply more fun with full teams.

Those are just some random thoughts, I hope it can be any useful

[þsy]

I like that idea vov. I can really understand the appeal for a 5 ladle prerequisite - honestly, if this was a bigger and more established phenomenon, then it would be perfect. But we can't translate it to sports, or even other esports (like LoL and the LCS), because we're so small in comparison, and players can't commit to clans that aren't necessarily permanent. The rosters were dated, and it didn't have the hype it could have done (I confess I was probably less interested than the average tronner)

So maybe some hybridisation between a 3-5 ladle requisite would be a good compromise?

And this really isn't a case of 'if it's not broken then why fix it' - this a discussion designed to help improve the Bowl for next time. Whilst it worked out (mostly) and was a fun event for most of the active community (and partly inactive, lol) to enjoy, there's always ways to improve things. Let's be imaginative here! We can make this into much more of a really huge and fun event that everyone looks forward to than it already is

[Vogue]

The only people complaining are inactives + part of an inactive team.

[Soul]

If the matches are to be best of 5 maybe lower the amount of teams?

[bilbo baggins]

i like the idea of a world cup style set up, 2 pool's round robin, top 2 form each andvance to knockout round (semi's but knockout sounds cooler)

[Fippmam]

Yea, I agree. Maybe next time the tournament should begin earlier so that semis and finals can be best out of 5. Last bowl was definitely the funniest tournament I've ever watched, but as some have already said, felt more like a ladle than its own tournament.

Off maybe it didnt feel special cause I wasn't playing xD

Anyway the 5 seasons thing seems to work fine. My only gripe is the work around to that. For example Olive got to play with rev, when I didn't even see him play in any ladle last season. Sure his name was on their sign ups thing, but meh. Seemed awkward, to me at least.

[Bytes]

But I guess the point with that is that he never played with any other team. I suppose ideally you take a register of people at ladles, people playing and their subs, but that's probably unrealistic.

If you want it to feel different to ladle then I think the world cup style would work well also.